YULIN, China — Middle Tennessee State University’s research of traditional Chinese herbal remedies in modern medicine took center stage at an international conference that opened in China on Monday, according to a news release.

MTSU President Sidney McPhee was a keynote speaker at the opening session of the three-day, 16th International Congress on Ethnopharmacology in Yulin, China, which attracted more than 300 academicians from 35 countries.

MTSU faculty members Elliot Altman and Iris Gao, who run the university’s Tennessee Center for Botanical Medicine Research, are set to present at the conference on Tuesday and Wednesday, the release stated.

“In the United States, many of our citizens are still trying to figure out the importance and the significance and the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine,” McPhee said in the release.

“Part of our research, the exposure, will help get our people in the West to understand and appreciate the outcomes.”

About 800 of the 7,400-plus plants at the garden show potential in treating a variety of diseases, the release stated. Researchers at the garden have been preparing extracts from these plants, yielding a library of up to 400,000 compounds that MTSU researchers can explore.

Applying traditional Chinese medicine to treat a variety of diseases is an ancient and respected tradition widely accepted in the Far East that is increasing in awareness in Western cultures.

McPhee, citing MTSU’s partnership with the Guangxi Botanical Garden of Medicinal Plants, said his university is “equal partners” in the study of samples from the world’s largest site of traditional Chinese herbal remedies.

“We want to promote the exchange of scholars and students,” he said. “We have had a number of faculty members from various Chinese universities come and spend a year studying in our labs and working with MTSU researchers.”

The partnership between MTSU and the Guangxi Botanical Garden started in 2011 and plays to the strengths of both institutions, the release stated. Garden researchers cultivate and prepare extracts, while MTSU scientists screen the samples to determine their medicinal promise.

“This will continue to be a major strategic emphasis for MTSU,” McPhee told the conference. “And I know that my colleagues in Guangxi and Beijing will continue to work with me … to advance this incredible work.”

Prior to the conference, Guangxi Botanical Garden director Miao Jianhua asked McPhee, Altman and Andrew Oppmann, MTSU vice president for marketing and communications, to plant a tree in front of the facility’s new entrance plaza to commemorating the partnership with the university. The MTSU trio also toured the garden’s research laboratories.